Oluwatoyin Salau, left, Aaron Glee, center, and Victoria Sims, right. (Selfie; Orange County Jail; Obituary)
A Florida man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for brutally murdering two women in June 2020, the prosecutor overseeing the case announced this week.
Aaron Glee, 52, reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in Tallahassee last month – formally admitting his legal culpability for kidnapping and killing Victoria “Vicki” Sims, 75, a retired state worker, and Oluwatoyin Salau, 19, a Black Lives Matter protester.
Police, however, say the truth of the defendant’s roles in the slayings – a suspect from the get-go – was never much in doubt.
According to the Tallahassee Police Department, Sims’ cellular phone was traced back to Glee’s residence. Her body was discovered under a bloody sheet in a bedroom. Investigators found Salau under a pile of leaves in the woods behind the residence.
Glee initially fled in the aftermath of the killings. His destination was West Palm Beach. He was quickly found and arrested by police at a bus station in Orlando after Sims died on June 13, 2022. The defendant then complained of breathing issues, and he was taken to a hospital where he made his first alleged confession.
“While at the hospital, Glee had made voluntary admissions to officers guarding him that he had murdered two women in Tallahassee,” they said. “He would also place a telephone call to his mother and make these same admissions.”
A more detailed confession, and an approximate order of events, came in a later confession, police said.
Glee allegedly told detectives he met Salau at a bus stop on June 6, 2022. There, the killer said, the local college student told him she had recently been sexually assaulted. In this version of the story, Glee told Salau she could clean up at his home and get some rest. According to this account, Sims then picked him and Salau up in her car. Police said surveillance footage corroborated his story.
After Salau showered, however, Glee allegedly admitted to raping and keeping her captive for roughly three to five days – though his recollection faltered, he said, because he was extremely drunk then. Ultimately, Glee said he killed Salau to cover up the crime because he didn’t want to go back to prison.
Salau was then tied up with rope in a way that would kill her, Glee allegedly confessed. He left the young woman in the room for hours, only occasionally checking on her and finally determining that she had died. The defendant would later make his way into Sims’ apartment – then he stole her car, kidnapped, and killed her as well, police said.
Under the terms of his plea agreement, Glee will be sentenced to life in prison, and the state will not seek the death penalty.
“We’re not in any way suggesting that he doesn’t deserve the death penalty for what he did to those women,” State Attorney Jack Campbell told the Tallahassee Democrat. “But at the same time, those are serious conversations, and in this decision, I think justice was served.”
Glee was widely expected to plead out earlier this year. In January, he surprised court watchers by declaring he wanted to take his case to trial. The plea agreement was finally reached in June before Leon Circuit Judge Frank Allman. His sentencing hearing is slated for Sept. 9.
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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